April 3, 2025 • 12 mins
James Rapien from BengalsTalk.com, Enter the Jungle, and Locked on Bengals, joined us to talk about the NFL draft for those of us who are just now starting to dive into the process.
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Listen to the show live weekday afternoons 3:00 - 6:00 on ESPN1530.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Wow, we're starting the four to twenty segment at exactly
four to twenty, like four to twenty. Oh oh, that
never happens. Brendanman and Jones on baseball coming up in
thirty minutes, and new Xavier men's basketball head coach Richard
Patino joins us in forty five minutes and looking forward
to that. All right, the draft starts in three weeks,
(00:20):
three weeks from tonight, and you know how much James
Rapeene loves the draft. Bengals Talk dot Com, Enter the Jungle,
locked on Bengals. And by the way, now that red
season has started, my favorite thing about red Ce One
of my favorite things about Reds on TV is you
get done watching the game right then they do the
postgame show. And this happened on Saturday. There's James. He's
(00:43):
like the postgame show to the postgame show on the
FanDuel Sports Network, and I wanted to talk draft with
him because for a lot of us, to process is
just starting high.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
James, Yeah, there's nothing like talking football after the Reds
postgame show.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
Well, what always happens is like sometimes I will turn
off the TV after the postgame show and I'll go
do something else, and then I turn on the TV
the next day and at like seven thirty in the morning,
there you are. Or sometimes I'll be out and about
and the game will have been on, but like the
bartender hasn't turned the TV station, and there you are,
And then there's no sound that I'll have to say, like,
(01:18):
can you turn that on? And they're like, no, we
got music on, and so I have to imagine what
you're saying. But you are a staple of this time
of year specifically.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
Yeah. My goal is for everyone in bars across the
city to have to see my mug. Even if you
can't hear me, you have to see me and know
that I'm there. So I'm glad it's working out.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
If you look at the draft order right in the
first round, when where is the line between the teams
that are excited at picking round one and the teams
that would prefer to trade down?
Speaker 2 (01:49):
Oh, I headed the Bengals. Put it that way. I
think it's certainly ahead of the Bengals. And you can
look at it and I think I think in that
Dallas rain, so they're twelfth. It starts to get pretty dicey.
You could go all the way to the Colts, and
part of that depends on does a Tyler Warren fall.
The Colts would be probably pretty excited to get him
(02:12):
at fourteen if you were to fall, But if not,
then yeah, you're looking at a lot of prospects that
are going to have flaws that are going to make
you pause. And I think that's what the middle of
this first round is, and that's what the Bengals are
going to have to navigate through.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
More than anybody I know, you have been adamant going
back years that the idea is to draft players and
not positions. And you know, we as fans, we always say, well,
they need an edge rusher, so we focus on edge rusher,
and the idea is to draft players, not positions. Do
you at all veer from that? Given the very obvious
(02:49):
needs the Bengals have on the offensive line and on defense.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
No, not one bit. If the Bengals are that worried
about their offensive line or and their defense, and they
should have addressed that and got it to a level
that they're comfortable with in free agency. And I think
you and I certainly questioned what they did or didn't
do in those spots, but that can't let you your
(03:14):
free agency can't force you to go in a direction
in the draft, and when you do that, it's hard
enough to get it right anyway. And so in a
draft that I look at and I think it's it's
a bit weaker early. I think day two it's not.
As there are a lot of guys I would take
on Day two and feel good about on Day one.
(03:36):
Feel like the Bengals are going to be drafting potentially
a Day two prospect. And so the way you avoid
that is you look at every position and you make
it clear that, hey, if there's a game changing tight end,
I'm open to it, Or if there's a game changing
running back that's at the top of our board, we're
going to go that route. Obviously, I think everyone would
(03:58):
love for them to address their pass rush to protect
Joe Burrow with a stud Kevin Zeitler two point zero
I pick seventeen. Everyone would love that. But if that's
not there, don't force it. In the comparison I made
earlier this week on Cincinnati Bengals Talk, it's all right, well,
if Corey Dillon is there and Jonah Williams is there,
(04:21):
who would you rather have? Neither one's a bust one
is clearly more, way more valuable.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
And in the Bengals Ring of Honor for Areason, you've
written about this team's ability if they take advantage of it,
to really make a lot of progress on Day two.
Walk me through how their positional needs matched the depth
in the draft that puts them in that position. Let's see.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
It's tough because I would love a bunch of Day
two picks, and that's why I'm sure the Bengals would
love to trade down. If they can move down from
seventeen to twenty four today and had another Day two selection,
they would do that, maybe even seventeen to twenty seven
and drop that far down because you look at the
safeties in this class, and I think that there are
(05:11):
multiple guys you could really like. Obviously, it's going to
start and end with Xavier Watts. Everyone's going to talk
about him because at the Al Golden Connection, but it's
certainly there are a bunch of guys in the middle
that you would consider, and one that I think the
Bengals are really interested in it would be Kevin Winston
Junior out of Penn State, and I think he's someone
(05:32):
you look at his game, in his athleticism in his size,
and he's coming off of an ACL, but he's going
to be ready for camp ran a four to five
or sub four or five at the Pro day last
week despite not not even being six months into his
recovery from an ACL. So I mean, so he's a
special talent. So if he's there on day two, I
(05:53):
picked forty nine, I think you seriously consider him, And
certainly I picked eighty one in the third round Andrew
mccuba at safety. And I do think that the Bengals
probably put themselves in a position because they didn't sign
one to take a safety either on day one or
day two. Maybe it's six seventeen, maybe it's in rounds
two or three, And so I think that that's one
of the needs that lines up where you could look
(06:15):
at day two and say, all right, well that makes sense.
I think offensive line certainly could. Kate Rattledge is the
guy you're going to see a lot on social media,
like if you do the PFF mock simulator, he's going
to be there out of Georgia in round three. He's
not going to be there in round three. Get get
that out of your head. If the Bengals want him.
They're going to have to cross their fingers that he's
(06:36):
there in round two. But that's certainly someone that you
could could see them taking. An athletic guard that could
come in right away, I think, and start for you.
And then as far as the defensive front, I mean,
there are a bunch of guys and I think that
don't be shocked if one of these guys at the
Bengals are mocked like the James Pierce juniors, maybe a
(06:58):
Walter Nolan. Some of these guys just fall to the
second round anyway. There are a lot of questions about them,
both on the field some of them off the field,
and when that happens, that leaves the guys falling. So
don't be shot that off one of these really high
end and I say that in quotes defensive linemen that
people are talking about fall to the middle of round
two and may thought of the Bengals at picked forty nine.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
You wrote about things you think about the draft, and
one of them was you saw the Bengals taking a
safety early and acknowledge that there are going to be
a lot of people who if they do that, don't
like it might take is you can't blast them for
their ability or inability to replace Jesse Bates and the
first version of von Bell and then be opposed to
them taking a safety when they haven't sufficially addressed the
(07:41):
position over the last couple of years.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
It's fair. Yeah, it's frustrating and annoying that we're still here,
but I'm not going to get mad one bit if
they take a safety at seventeen. You know, if they
take Nick even Worry from South Carolina. All right, My
big question with him is in his athleticism, is in
(08:06):
his ability to hit, his ability to play football at
a high level. Does he fix that back end issue
that you have Malachi Starts, I would wonder, all right, Well,
he certainly fits the bill in a lot of ways
for Georgia and he can play that back in but
is he athletic enough to take seventeenth? Overall? Jesse Bates
was a second round pick, and that's why I look
(08:27):
at the drop off and I could totally see what
I'm saying. Yeah, Malachi Starts is really good, but let's
wait and see if Xavier Watts is there, Andrew mccooba
is there, or Kevin Winston Junior is there. But I
look at this safety class, and I think they have
to be able to don't think that you're going to
(08:48):
see one of these guys fall into the fourth round,
fifth round that can come in and play right away.
And I don't know about you, but I don't feel
great about them just keeping Geno Stone around. I think
I've been one of them. Yeah, and I've been one
of the only maybe not maybe I'm not reading all
of the coverage that my probagues are putting out there,
but I'm pretty critical of that because I just I
(09:11):
don't think that that's the right move given you could
have saved six plus million dollars in cap space, and
what I saw last year was a replaceable safety. Might
replace him with with Tyson Tyson Anderson, which could probably do,
but like he's faster and more athletic. You know, he
can tackle. He saw it on special teams. So I
think that that's one of the bigger mistakes that goes
(09:34):
not talked about as much. I would say, so, Yeah,
I think they do have to go the safe throughout
early in this draft, and it's because that's part of
the strength of the draft.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
Certainly, you've done one mob draft, how many will you
do between now in April twenty fourth.
Speaker 2 (09:47):
Oh, probably four, I would say, right, we're three weeks away,
so I'll do one. Let's see, it's Thursday, so I'll
do one next week, one the week after, and then
I'll probably after that it'll be like down to the wire.
So I'll probably do one one final one or a
predictive one or something like that. So at least three more,
(10:09):
maybe four, who knows. I think in that range though,
so we'll finish with five mo.
Speaker 1 (10:15):
I think that's a fair number. Five months. I think, yeah,
for better than most. I think pretty much better than everybody.
All Right, I know this is your time of year.
I'll see you at Long Necks in three weeks. Thank
you as always.
Speaker 2 (10:28):
Can't wait and buckle up because we're going to be
talking about running backs and tight ends at Long Necks
and people aren't ready for.
Speaker 1 (10:35):
No, they're not. I could you know as well as
I do. They're not ready for it. I'm not sure
I'm ready for it, but I do understand where you're
coming from. I just I want them to trade down.
I want more picks. Oh, I pick at seventeen. But
I think there are people in my position, in your
position across the country saying the exact same thing about
the respective NFL team.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
Yep, no doubt, trade down is the number one mock
draft spot for the Bengals at seventeen. Everyone's doing it,
which means they are going to have to stick and pick, no.
Speaker 1 (11:06):
Stick and thick. All right, thank you as always, man,
do appreciate it. Thanks, No, it's our guy, James obtain
Bengals Talk since I ha Bengals Talk dot Com part
of SI Enter the Jungle locked on Bengals and they
air James's show on FanDuel Sports Network, and that obviously
is the network that carries the Reds games. And so
(11:28):
if you're like me and you you have the game
on and then you sometimes go do others. Suddenly there Saturday,
the game ended, the postgame show aired, and then I'm
walking to my living room, walking to my grill, and
there's there's James. There's James talking Bengals. Gotta watch. And
as my wife said, oh it's James. That's what we're
gonna call him from now on. All right, Sports and
(11:48):
lines next ESPN fifteen to.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
Thirty, Snattie's ESPN fifteen thirty Traffic.
Speaker 3 (11:57):
Well then you see hell traffic center. Don't bend it
intur you down. You see health Orthopedics and sports medicine
experts can help keep you moving. Schedule the same day
appointment you see health dot com heavy Your traffic on
seventy five southbound Hoppele to the Brent Spence Bridge and
northbound seventy five Mitchell to Town is a little sluggish.
On seventy one, we're seeing about a ten minute drive
(12:17):
northbound between Norway Lateral and Stewart's. Southbound seventy five MLK
two four seventy one about a five minute drive by
Rick Shrimp with traffic.
Speaker 2 (12:27):
This report is sponsored by Rapid Radios. Low's is the
destination
Wow, we're starting the four to twenty segment at exactly
four to twenty, like four to twenty. Oh oh, that
never happens. Brendanman and Jones on baseball coming up in
thirty minutes, and new Xavier men's basketball head coach Richard
Patino joins us in forty five minutes and looking forward
to that. All right, the draft starts in three weeks,
(00:20):
three weeks from tonight, and you know how much James
Rapeene loves the draft. Bengals Talk dot Com, Enter the Jungle,
locked on Bengals. And by the way, now that red
season has started, my favorite thing about red Ce One
of my favorite things about Reds on TV is you
get done watching the game right then they do the
postgame show. And this happened on Saturday. There's James. He's
(00:43):
like the postgame show to the postgame show on the
FanDuel Sports Network, and I wanted to talk draft with
him because for a lot of us, to process is
just starting high.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
James, Yeah, there's nothing like talking football after the Reds
postgame show.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
Well, what always happens is like sometimes I will turn
off the TV after the postgame show and I'll go
do something else, and then I turn on the TV
the next day and at like seven thirty in the morning,
there you are. Or sometimes I'll be out and about
and the game will have been on, but like the
bartender hasn't turned the TV station, and there you are,
And then there's no sound that I'll have to say, like,
(01:18):
can you turn that on? And they're like, no, we
got music on, and so I have to imagine what
you're saying. But you are a staple of this time
of year specifically.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
Yeah. My goal is for everyone in bars across the
city to have to see my mug. Even if you
can't hear me, you have to see me and know
that I'm there. So I'm glad it's working out.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
If you look at the draft order right in the
first round, when where is the line between the teams
that are excited at picking round one and the teams
that would prefer to trade down?
Speaker 2 (01:49):
Oh, I headed the Bengals. Put it that way. I
think it's certainly ahead of the Bengals. And you can
look at it and I think I think in that
Dallas rain, so they're twelfth. It starts to get pretty dicey.
You could go all the way to the Colts, and
part of that depends on does a Tyler Warren fall.
The Colts would be probably pretty excited to get him
(02:12):
at fourteen if you were to fall, But if not,
then yeah, you're looking at a lot of prospects that
are going to have flaws that are going to make
you pause. And I think that's what the middle of
this first round is, and that's what the Bengals are
going to have to navigate through.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
More than anybody I know, you have been adamant going
back years that the idea is to draft players and
not positions. And you know, we as fans, we always say, well,
they need an edge rusher, so we focus on edge rusher,
and the idea is to draft players, not positions. Do
you at all veer from that? Given the very obvious
(02:49):
needs the Bengals have on the offensive line and on defense.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
No, not one bit. If the Bengals are that worried
about their offensive line or and their defense, and they
should have addressed that and got it to a level
that they're comfortable with in free agency. And I think
you and I certainly questioned what they did or didn't
do in those spots, but that can't let you your
(03:14):
free agency can't force you to go in a direction
in the draft, and when you do that, it's hard
enough to get it right anyway. And so in a
draft that I look at and I think it's it's
a bit weaker early. I think day two it's not.
As there are a lot of guys I would take
on Day two and feel good about on Day one.
(03:36):
Feel like the Bengals are going to be drafting potentially
a Day two prospect. And so the way you avoid
that is you look at every position and you make
it clear that, hey, if there's a game changing tight end,
I'm open to it, Or if there's a game changing
running back that's at the top of our board, we're
going to go that route. Obviously, I think everyone would
(03:58):
love for them to address their pass rush to protect
Joe Burrow with a stud Kevin Zeitler two point zero
I pick seventeen. Everyone would love that. But if that's
not there, don't force it. In the comparison I made
earlier this week on Cincinnati Bengals Talk, it's all right, well,
if Corey Dillon is there and Jonah Williams is there,
(04:21):
who would you rather have? Neither one's a bust one
is clearly more, way more valuable.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
And in the Bengals Ring of Honor for Areason, you've
written about this team's ability if they take advantage of it,
to really make a lot of progress on Day two.
Walk me through how their positional needs matched the depth
in the draft that puts them in that position. Let's see.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
It's tough because I would love a bunch of Day
two picks, and that's why I'm sure the Bengals would
love to trade down. If they can move down from
seventeen to twenty four today and had another Day two selection,
they would do that, maybe even seventeen to twenty seven
and drop that far down because you look at the
safeties in this class, and I think that there are
(05:11):
multiple guys you could really like. Obviously, it's going to
start and end with Xavier Watts. Everyone's going to talk
about him because at the Al Golden Connection, but it's
certainly there are a bunch of guys in the middle
that you would consider, and one that I think the
Bengals are really interested in it would be Kevin Winston
Junior out of Penn State, and I think he's someone
(05:32):
you look at his game, in his athleticism in his size,
and he's coming off of an ACL, but he's going
to be ready for camp ran a four to five
or sub four or five at the Pro day last
week despite not not even being six months into his
recovery from an ACL. So I mean, so he's a
special talent. So if he's there on day two, I
(05:53):
picked forty nine, I think you seriously consider him, And
certainly I picked eighty one in the third round Andrew
mccuba at safety. And I do think that the Bengals
probably put themselves in a position because they didn't sign
one to take a safety either on day one or
day two. Maybe it's six seventeen, maybe it's in rounds
two or three, And so I think that that's one
of the needs that lines up where you could look
(06:15):
at day two and say, all right, well that makes sense.
I think offensive line certainly could. Kate Rattledge is the
guy you're going to see a lot on social media,
like if you do the PFF mock simulator, he's going
to be there out of Georgia in round three. He's
not going to be there in round three. Get get
that out of your head. If the Bengals want him.
They're going to have to cross their fingers that he's
(06:36):
there in round two. But that's certainly someone that you
could could see them taking. An athletic guard that could
come in right away, I think, and start for you.
And then as far as the defensive front, I mean,
there are a bunch of guys and I think that
don't be shocked if one of these guys at the
Bengals are mocked like the James Pierce juniors, maybe a
(06:58):
Walter Nolan. Some of these guys just fall to the
second round anyway. There are a lot of questions about them,
both on the field some of them off the field,
and when that happens, that leaves the guys falling. So
don't be shot that off one of these really high
end and I say that in quotes defensive linemen that
people are talking about fall to the middle of round
two and may thought of the Bengals at picked forty nine.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
You wrote about things you think about the draft, and
one of them was you saw the Bengals taking a
safety early and acknowledge that there are going to be
a lot of people who if they do that, don't
like it might take is you can't blast them for
their ability or inability to replace Jesse Bates and the
first version of von Bell and then be opposed to
them taking a safety when they haven't sufficially addressed the
(07:41):
position over the last couple of years.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
It's fair. Yeah, it's frustrating and annoying that we're still here,
but I'm not going to get mad one bit if
they take a safety at seventeen. You know, if they
take Nick even Worry from South Carolina. All right, My
big question with him is in his athleticism, is in
(08:06):
his ability to hit, his ability to play football at
a high level. Does he fix that back end issue
that you have Malachi Starts, I would wonder, all right, Well,
he certainly fits the bill in a lot of ways
for Georgia and he can play that back in but
is he athletic enough to take seventeenth? Overall? Jesse Bates
was a second round pick, and that's why I look
(08:27):
at the drop off and I could totally see what
I'm saying. Yeah, Malachi Starts is really good, but let's
wait and see if Xavier Watts is there, Andrew mccooba
is there, or Kevin Winston Junior is there. But I
look at this safety class, and I think they have
to be able to don't think that you're going to
(08:48):
see one of these guys fall into the fourth round,
fifth round that can come in and play right away.
And I don't know about you, but I don't feel
great about them just keeping Geno Stone around. I think
I've been one of them. Yeah, and I've been one
of the only maybe not maybe I'm not reading all
of the coverage that my probagues are putting out there,
but I'm pretty critical of that because I just I
(09:11):
don't think that that's the right move given you could
have saved six plus million dollars in cap space, and
what I saw last year was a replaceable safety. Might
replace him with with Tyson Tyson Anderson, which could probably do,
but like he's faster and more athletic. You know, he
can tackle. He saw it on special teams. So I
think that that's one of the bigger mistakes that goes
(09:34):
not talked about as much. I would say, so, Yeah,
I think they do have to go the safe throughout
early in this draft, and it's because that's part of
the strength of the draft.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
Certainly, you've done one mob draft, how many will you
do between now in April twenty fourth.
Speaker 2 (09:47):
Oh, probably four, I would say, right, we're three weeks away,
so I'll do one. Let's see, it's Thursday, so I'll
do one next week, one the week after, and then
I'll probably after that it'll be like down to the wire.
So I'll probably do one one final one or a
predictive one or something like that. So at least three more,
(10:09):
maybe four, who knows. I think in that range though,
so we'll finish with five mo.
Speaker 1 (10:15):
I think that's a fair number. Five months. I think, yeah,
for better than most. I think pretty much better than everybody.
All Right, I know this is your time of year.
I'll see you at Long Necks in three weeks. Thank
you as always.
Speaker 2 (10:28):
Can't wait and buckle up because we're going to be
talking about running backs and tight ends at Long Necks
and people aren't ready for.
Speaker 1 (10:35):
No, they're not. I could you know as well as
I do. They're not ready for it. I'm not sure
I'm ready for it, but I do understand where you're
coming from. I just I want them to trade down.
I want more picks. Oh, I pick at seventeen. But
I think there are people in my position, in your
position across the country saying the exact same thing about
the respective NFL team.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
Yep, no doubt, trade down is the number one mock
draft spot for the Bengals at seventeen. Everyone's doing it,
which means they are going to have to stick and pick, no.
Speaker 1 (11:06):
Stick and thick. All right, thank you as always, man,
do appreciate it. Thanks, No, it's our guy, James obtain
Bengals Talk since I ha Bengals Talk dot Com part
of SI Enter the Jungle locked on Bengals and they
air James's show on FanDuel Sports Network, and that obviously
is the network that carries the Reds games. And so
(11:28):
if you're like me and you you have the game
on and then you sometimes go do others. Suddenly there Saturday,
the game ended, the postgame show aired, and then I'm
walking to my living room, walking to my grill, and
there's there's James. There's James talking Bengals. Gotta watch. And
as my wife said, oh it's James. That's what we're
gonna call him from now on. All right, Sports and
(11:48):
lines next ESPN fifteen to.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
Thirty, Snattie's ESPN fifteen thirty Traffic.
Speaker 3 (11:57):
Well then you see hell traffic center. Don't bend it
intur you down. You see health Orthopedics and sports medicine
experts can help keep you moving. Schedule the same day
appointment you see health dot com heavy Your traffic on
seventy five southbound Hoppele to the Brent Spence Bridge and
northbound seventy five Mitchell to Town is a little sluggish.
On seventy one, we're seeing about a ten minute drive
(12:17):
northbound between Norway Lateral and Stewart's. Southbound seventy five MLK
two four seventy one about a five minute drive by
Rick Shrimp with traffic.
Speaker 2 (12:27):
This report is sponsored by Rapid Radios. Low's is the
destination
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